BOSTON—This is pretty much how things have gone for the Washington Wizards this season. With 3:44 to play in overtime Wednesday at TD Garden, point guard A.J. Price took a running 15-footer that managed to go down, moving Washington into a 90-88 lead and nudging the team toward what could have been its first win. Instead, the Wizards scored two points the rest of the way before a meaningless Bradley Beal layup with 0.6 seconds on the clock.

The Wizards had done much the same thing Saturday against the Boston Celtics, when they led, 86-84, with 2:56 to play before closing out scoreless the rest of the way in a loss. And in the opener against Cleveland, the Wizards were tied at 80-80 with 5:31 to go. They proceeded to score four points from there and lost by 10.

So it’s no mystery as to why the Wizards are winless to this point. As coach Randy Wittman said, “We’ve got to learn to play down the stretch of games.”

What matters most now, though, is that what was supposed to be a very different Wizards season has looked like every other Wizards season, in which fast starts have not been a strong suit. Nor have strong finishes, but, fact is, the team has often been left for dead before Thanksgiving. They were 0-8 last year, following up on a 2-6 start the previous season. They were 2-7 out of the gate in 2009, and 1-10 in ’08. Thus, 0-3 feels too familiar.

Not having center Nene (foot) available in the middle has been a big part of the Wizards’ early failings, and it is especially frustrating for them because his unwillingness to play through injury was exactly the reason the Denver Nuggets traded Nene to the Wizards last March just months after having given him a five-year, $55 million contract. Nene’s return is still up in the air.

But the bigger problem is that point guard John Wall has been missing, and not even he is sure when he will return. Originally, Wall’s knee problem was expected to keep him out for eight weeks, including the start of training camp. That would put Wall back at the end of November. But now Wall is not sure when his knee will be right, and his doctor has warned that if he comes back too soon, he risks developing a stress fracture.

This puts the Wizards in a difficult position, immediately and into the future. Since March, they have taken chances on some big contracts in order to bring in veterans to help mold a more mature team around Wall than the one he has dealt with in his first two years—sources close to Wall have expressed unhappiness with the state of the team as Wall has tried to develop. They committed to $95 million worth of salaries going forward, adding Nene, Emeka Okafor and Trevor Ariza in hopes of laying the foundation for a playoff team that would get Wall’s development back on track. Instead, they have gotten nothing from Nene, 3.7 points on 22.2 percent shooting from Ariza and 5.0 points on 33.3 percent shooting from Okafor.

“Obviously, we all have to do a better job, but especially us as veterans,” Okafor said. “That’s why were are here, and we have to be productive. We feel we are a playoff team but we can’t talk about it and we can’t worry about who is not playing. We have to do it ourselves.”

If they don’t, if Wall’s absence extends to the point that the Wizards are already out of the playoff picture when he returns, Washington will be put into a very awkward position. It won’t know what to make of the guy picked first overall just three years earlier. Wall was the No. 1 pick in the ’10 draft, and while the two top picks before him (Derrick Rose and Blake Griffin) quickly achieved stardom and the two top picks after him (Kyrie Irving and Anthony Davis) appear destined for the same, it is still hard to figure out how good Wall is.

We know Wall’s positives. He is a master with the ball, able to break down defenses with his quickness and penetration, but he also turns the ball over at a very heavy rate (3.8 per game in his career) and showed no signs of improving a very troubling midrange jumper last year.

Outside of shots at the rim, Wall’s shooting percentage dropped from every spot on the floor except 10-15 feet, where, according to Hoopdata.com, he enjoyed only a slight uptick from 28.0 percent to 32.1 percent. His confidence in those shots didn’t grow, though, as he took fewer per game in his second year than in his first. So his negatives are glaring.

There is no doubt that Wall has worked hard to correct his flaws—in fact, it might have been the intensity of his offseason work that caused the knee problem in the first place. But there is no telling whether he will be able to implement that work into game situations. This is his third year, the year in which most players take the lessons learned from their first two seasons and show marked improvement. Next summer, the Wizards will have to decide whether to offer Wall a sizable contract extension. They need to know that he can be better on the floor and lead a playoff-caliber team before they do that.

The way things have shaped up thus far, as Wall’s knee issue threatens to linger into December and maybe beyond, and the Wizards have very little to go on when evaluating the guy who is supposed to be their star and franchise cornerstone. The team’s record is lagging, as usual. But of bigger concern is the way this injury is clouding the franchise’s future as a whole.